Texas residents sift through rubble from tornadoes

AP photoAshley Quinton walks through the tornado damaged home of her friend Sherry Enochs in hopes of finding personal items that can be salvaged Wednesday, April 4, 2012, in Forney, Texas.

FORNEY, Texas —
As a twister bore down on her neighborhood, Sherry Enochs grabbed the
three young children in her home and hid in her bathtub. The winds
swirled and snatched away two of the children. Her home collapsed around
her.

Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt.

Enochs, 53,
stood Wednesday amid the wreckage of what was once her home in the North
Texas city of Forney, among the hardest hit by a series of tornadoes
that barreled through one of the nation's largest metropolitan areas a
day earlier. No one was reported dead, and of the more than 20 injured,
only a handful were seriously hurt.

"If you really think about it,
the fact that everybody who woke up in Forney yesterday is alive today
in Forney, that's a real blessing," Mayor Darren Rozell said.

The
National Weather Service is investigating the damage caused by the
tornadoes, which appeared to flatten some homes and graze others next
door. The twisters jumped from place to place, passing many heavily
populated areas overhead and perhaps limiting what could have been a
more damaging, deadly storm. Most of Dallas was spared the full wrath of
the storms.

While tornadoes can strike major cities, having two
major systems strike a single metropolitan area is highly unusual,
meteorologist Jesse Moore said. The Texas twisters would have done more
damage had they stayed on the ground for more of the storms' path. But
weather experts and officials credited the quick response to tornado
warnings for preventing deaths or more injuries.

In the Diamond
Creek subdivision where Enochs' home was destroyed, residents put on
work gloves Wednesday and began cleaning up. Many noticed things in
their yards that didn't belong to them.

Enochs doesn't have a
clear memory of exactly how things happened Tuesday, but she was found
holding her grandson in the bathtub, which had blown into the area where
her garage once was. A 3-year-old she was watching was found wandering
around the backyard. A neighbor pulled another child Enochs had been
taking care of, 19-month-old Abigail Jones, from the rubble.

"I heard the rumbling from the tornado and I didn't even hear the house fall," Enochs said.

Abigail
was taken to the hospital but released. The blonde, smiling child with
bows in her hair was bruised all over her body, but not seriously hurt.
Her mother, Misty Jones, brought her back Wednesday to see what had
happened.

Seven people were injured in Forney, none seriously. An
additional 10 people were hurt in Lancaster, south of Dallas, and three
people in Arlington, west of Dallas.

National Weather Service
crews in Forney, east of Dallas, spotted storm damage that suggested the
twister there was an EF3, with wind speeds as high as 165 mph. Other
tornadoes in Arlington and Lancaster appear to have been EF2 tornadoes,
with wind speeds up to 135 mph. Tornadoes can range from EF0, the
weakest, to EF5, the strongest. An EF2 or higher is considered a
significant tornado.

A twister can hit one spot and continue for
miles before touching down again, Moore said. It's difficult to explain
why a tornado touches down when it does.

"It can destroy one house
and the one across the street is fine. It can go back up for a mile or
two and drop back down," Moore said. "That's all the crazy things that
can happen with tornadoes."

Randy McKeever and his wife and
several of their friends sorted through what was left of their house
Wednesday. Their roof was completely gone. The front yard was littered
with shingles and pieces of wood. Inside was a jumble of belongings.
McKeever, 47, wore work gloves as he tried to find anything that could
be salvaged.

"There's a bunch of stuff in there that's not even ours," he said.

Stunning
video from Dallas showed big-rig trailers tossed into the air and
spiraling like footballs. An entire wing of an Arlington nursing home
crumbled. In Lancaster, dozens of young children cowered in the safe
room of a day care near a local church. The storm pulled one of the
walls back "like you were peeling an orange," day care director Danita
Harris said.

The students were moved further indoors and rode out the rest of the storm safely, she said.

"Not one Band-Aid had to be applied," Harris said.

Hundreds
of flights into and out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and
Dallas Love Field were canceled or diverted elsewhere Tuesday. American
Airlines, which operates most flights at the airport, said it canceled
more than 400 flights Wednesday after stopping about 800 Tuesday. An
airport spokesman said more than 110 planes were damaged by hail.

April
is typically the worst month in a tornado season that stretches from
March to June, but Tuesday's outburst suggests that "we're on pace to be
above normal," said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop.

Gov. Rick Perry plans an aerial tour of the damage on Thursday.

___

Associated
Press writers Schuyler Dixon in Arlington; Diana Heidgerd, Terry
Wallace and David Koenig in Dallas; Betsy Blaney in Lubbock; and Paul
Weber in San Antonio contributed to this report.